Ozaukee County Fire & EMS Service Sharing Feasibility Analysis

Ozaukee County Communities Complete Phase I Feasibility Analysis of Fire & EMS Service Sharing Opportunities

Zoom Video Presentation by Wisconsin Policy Forum

Ozaukee County Fire & EMS Study Brief

Ozaukee County Fire & EMS Study - Entire Document

Following an eight-month study of potential service-sharing opportunities across nine (9) Paid-On-Call (POC) municipal fire departments throughout Ozaukee County, the Wisconsin Policy Forum (WPF) today released a report outlining the results of its independent analysis. The report, entitled First Response: Addressing Fire & Emergency Medical Service Challenges in Ozaukee County, represents a Phase I Feasibility Analysis on behalf of the ten separate jurisdictions that initiated the review. These participating communities included the Cities of Cedarburg, Mequon and Port Washington, the Towns of Belgium and Cedarburg, the Villages of Fredonia, Grafton, Saukville and Thiensville and unincorporated area of Waubeka.

Within this Phase I analysis, the Wisconsin Policy Forum does not recommend a specific consolidation approach and implementation plan. Rather, the report develops a range of potential options and provides sufficient fiscal and programmatic analysis to allow policy-makers the ability to determine if any of the identified options should be considered for more detailed analysis, refinement and potential implementation.

After reviewing and analyzing operating budgets, capital budgets, service call histories and personnel related data of the participating departments, the Forum found that:

• Calls for services across all nine departments have risen nearly 24% between 2015-2019.
• EMS response times do not meet statewide and national averages and/or standards. Between turnout and travel time, average response times range from 7 - 14.5 minutes.
• Departments are having difficulty recruiting and retaining part-time or volunteer staff. Even the better-staffed Ozaukee County departments do not have sufficient resources to manage a structure fire, and any major incident generally requires a call for mutual aid.

To address these issues, the WPF identified three tiers of increasingly comprehensive options:

Tier 1: Departments increase collaboration while maintaining independence. This could mean strategically stationing and jointly paying for full-time paramedic interceptors across the county, or an effort to boost the number of full-time shifts at strategic station locations when call volumes are high or staffing levels are low.

Tier 2: Partially consolidate the departments while moving toward a full-time staffing model. A hypothetical example is provided that illustrates a merger between Grafton and Saukville. Another scenario shows the existing departments merging into two departments: one in the northern part of the county and another in the southern portion.

Tier 3: Modeling of a single, consolidated fire department to serve all of Ozaukee County. One scenario approximates the staffing model used by the North Shore Fire Department (high-cost), while a second scenario shows a lower-priced approach that may more appropriately reflect Ozaukee County’s call volumes and density.

In asking the Forum to analyze these options, Ozaukee County leaders are not alone. Even before the pandemic, efforts to explore enhanced service sharing and cooperation among regional fire and EMS providers have become more common throughout Wisconsin and across the nation.

The report, which is available at www.wispolicyforum.org, provides hypothetical options as a starting point for discussion amongst the participating entities, and over the next month, WPF staff will present their findings to each community’s respective governing body. From there, each municipality will determine if any of the options should be further discussed or analyzed. The WPF will be presenting to a joint Town and City of Cedarburg meeting on April 7th at Cedarburg Town Hall at 6pm.